


Yeah, It Took Me Some Time (But I Figured It Out)

by blackorchids



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Allison Lives, Allison-centric, F/F, Gen, Magical Lydia Martin, Magical Realism, Pack Feels, Rebuilt Hale House, Wine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 08:31:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2806136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackorchids/pseuds/blackorchids
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Allison's been gone for years, but the pack needs her back and she's finally ready to return home and face the music.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Yeah, It Took Me Some Time (But I Figured It Out)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BootsnBlossoms](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BootsnBlossoms/gifts).



> title from the one direction song "where do broken hearts go"
> 
> written for the teenwolf femslash exchange. unsure if this actually is at all what you expected, darling, but I did my best!

“Don’t you think--” Allison panted from below, her fingernails digging into her bare thighs--because _of course_ she’d wear a skirt to this kind of mission--as she tried to shake her hair out of her face and away from her mouth without dropping her, “--we’re getting a little _old_ for this?”

Lydia wobbles on her shoulders, sufficiently distracted from her work by the newfound knowledge that she was very much out of breath. She looks down, stupid green bambi-eyes glinting at her oddly from the height and the relative darkness. It was new moon that night, and the only source of light was coming from a ridiculous gasoline lantern Stiles’d bought from some stupid sports store he’d evidently stopped at on the way home from college.

“I guess the freshman-fifteen is a real thing,” she says, taking in her puffed out cheeks with an odd mixture of abashed amusement.

“More like the freshman-fifty,” Allison retorts, uncharacteristically snappy because of the late hour and her growing discomfort. It had been years since the pair of them had returned home--her from Paris, and Lydia from _Manchuria_ of all places. “Just hurry up so I can do my bit and we can get out of the damn cold.”

“Ally A, you _swore’d_ ,” Lydia gasps playfully, ignoring the crack at her weight with the sort of confidence only she could wield and Allison seriously contemplates releasing her thighs and leaning back. The smug jerk wouldn’t expect it _at all_ and she probably wouldn’t be too terribly injured. Before she even has the chance to chastise herself for being so short-tempered with someone she hasn’t seen in literal years, Lydia returns her attention to the final window of the pack house they were working on warding, fumbling with the two tiny clay pots of colored pastes--brown for comfort and stability, blue for tranquility--before she gets her thumb in the third, steadying herself with a breath before she leans forward and painstakingly etches out the last three runes: protection, happiness, life.

“Green for vitality and prosperity,” she can hear Lydia muttering to herself. She doesn’t say the next part, but Allison knows Lydia’s thinking it--she is too. They’d never used the green paste before. It was the only one in Stiles’ collection that was the original mixture he’d made, way back when they were young and fighting a constant war. Scott and Derek had wanted them to use it then, after the nogustine, but Stiles had held fast, insisting for reasons known only to him that he wanted to save it.

Allison almost drops her companion for real this time, when she jerks back and then forward in a stilted sort of move, pressing her lips to the wooden panel, holding them there and breathing deeply in a sort of personal good luck blessing she’d picked up after they first learned how to ward houses. Abruptly, Lydia twists in a move she’d mastered before they separated off to their own ends of the world, and suddenly she’s on the ground behind her darker-haired accomplice.

“Your turn,” she says needlessly, and Allison feels the thrumming down to her bones already, mirrored by the uncanny brightness of her eyes. They sit, cross-legged, facing one another. She lets her eyelids flutter closed, seeing Lydia, strong and beautiful, in her mind’s eye as she carefully slots everything back into Stiles’ stupid backpack that makes him look like he’s still seventeen when he carries it around. Lydia pulls out a candle--white, white, always white when she’s involved in the magic, to counteract the darkness that still clings to the furthermost corner of her heart from her death-tied banshee roots--mumbling something unintelligible and kissing that too, before she snaps her fingers and Allison can suddenly sense the power of the tiny flicker of the flame.

Its her job to draw the pentagram, and Lydia passes her the silver knife so that she can cut into the palm of her hand. Tramping down on the near-overwhelming hum of magic coursing through her veins, bursting to be freed after so long of keeping it dimmed down with herbs, Allison opens her eyes and focuses on making sure the cut is clean and straight. She cuts through the old scar tissue already there, hoping to avoid a new mark, passes the red-head back the knife. The blood spurts like always, as though the magic burning in it is eager to escape and Allison uses her thumb to draw the tiny pentagram around the candle.

Lydia tapes up her palm and then links their fingers together. Blood magic’s risky business--it can turn dark and distorted pretty quickly. But it’s the strongest and Allison has always been willing to take the risk. It’s been years, but that fierce need to protect the pack still fills up every recess of her being. She takes a steadying breath, and then one more for luck, and then, fingers clasped between Lydia’s, she begins to chant.

The magic flares up immediately, singing in her blood, causing the ends of her hair to lift up from the sheer energy that she draws from her chakra and allows to bounce of Lydia’s, using the flame of the candle for a steadying base as she puts her everything into the spell, the childish part of her still fascinated with how things glow pleased in knowing that Lydia can be counted on to tell her what happens visually. Allison pulls from every happy memory, every shared glance, every single moment when she looked a packmate in the eye (during times of distress or even the brief seconds of peace) and felt the mutual knowledge that they would be willing to die for one another.

She loses her poise a little, practically shouts the last lines, latin rolling off her tongue as awkwardly as it always has, but made up for in sheer power. The light behind her eyelids dims down and she knows without cracking an eye open that the candle has snuffed out. The magic’s still there, rushing through her veins, but it’s content now, steady and willing to be forgotten in the meantime. Allison slumps forward a little, dropping Lydia’s hands, a tired, exhilarated smile pulling at her lips that only grows when her best friend suddenly and uncharacteristically _whoops_.

“Ally,” she says, awestruck, and when Allison opens her eyes she finds the red-head’s cheeks flushed and her pupils blown. She looks gorgeous, Allison thinks absently, reaching out and pressing the pads of her fingers to the inside of Lydia’s wrist, feeling the rapidfire thrum of her heartbeat, the spark inside of her thrashing to life. Lydia glances up at the house, still clearly electrified, but a grimace crosses her expression and she breaks the pentagram with a swipe of a Louboutin-encased foot, tosses the candle carelessly into the backpack and zips it up quickly, leaping to her feet and dragging Allison up with her. A siren sounds in the distance, but from Lydia’s deepening grimace, Allison’s pretty sure she can guess where it’s headed.

“It was like the northern lights,” Lydia admits, proud and rueful, tugging her through the woods as Allison tries to get a hold of herself. That kind of magic--blood magic at that--it was heady and enlivening and _addictive_ , especially for someone who spent a hell of a lot of time keeping it bottled up. “It was amazing and I will definitely be telling everyone about it tomorrow, but the police probably did not find it as delightful.”

The pair of them reach Allison’s motorcycle, black and as sleek as Derek’s camaro, and much, much quieter than the damned Jeep that apparently still ran that Stiles had wanted them to take--for old time’s sake, he’d claimed on the phone. Lydia held onto her as she zipped through the bumpy paths, headlights off, the knowledge and familiarity of the forest slamming into her the further she went, taking detours just in case the police found the tire tracks. Years away, she thinks wryly, and, still, remembering every single aspect of Beacon Hills is as easy as riding a bike. No pun intended.

-

Allison wakes up with red hair in her mouth and a delicate, manicured hand gripping the belt-loop at her hipbone and thinks that she never wants to wake up anywhere else again. Stiles is curled up on the floor in front of them on the couch though, obviously having finally gotten in sometime after she and Lydia had stumbled through the door and collapsed on the couch, and Allison is not quite yet awake enough to field the silent teasing she knows he will put her through if he wakes and finds her sighing contentedly while Lydia snuggles the shit out of her in her sleep.

Derek’s gone, likely out for a run or even at his job, depending on how late in the day it actually is. There is a sticky-note attached to Stiles’ forehead, perhaps the only part of any of them he felt he could safely reach without disturbing them from their rest.

Allison leans forward, shifting carefully so that she doesn’t wake Lydia, and peels the thing from his face, flipping it around and letting out an actual bark of loud laughter. 

Derek’s stupid sticky has absolutely nothing written on it, and her laugh was loud enough to wake Stiles, who starts when he cracks open his eyes and sees her leaning over him. A flailing arm smacks her high across the cheek bone and she scowls at his sheepish expression, crawling over him and taking some effort to pull her hips free of the couch, not being particularly careful where she puts her feet, still encased in muddy combat boots.

“Watch it,” Stiles mumbles, shoving her boots away from his face, squawking when his hair gets pulled, some of it evidently having gotten stuck in the mud on the one that had been hanging off the side, drying there overnight.

“You’re going to be cutting that, right?” She asks him with the sort of judgmental voice she’d picked up early on in her and Lydia’s friendship. Her pitch is low, efforts to keep Lydia asleep a little bit longer while she gets ahold of her bearings.

Years, Allison thinks, rounding the couch and stepping across the threshold into the bright, clean kitchen. There’s a list on Derek’s wobbly kitchen table, likely for her and Lydia's benefit, since they’d been MIA the longest. Allison had only the faintest memories of blonde hair and long, long legs when she read over Malia’s name, but she was pretty pleased to find that no one new had been inducted. That would have been a little bit much to stomach, and she knew herself well enough to know she’d feel uncomfortable around someone that everyone else already knew well. She and Lydia had been fine reuniting last night so they could do the wards, but she was sure something would give. If not with her, then with someone else in the pack.

Not for the first time, she wondered if she’d made the right decision in taking a breather. The back of her neck prickled and she turned sharply, relaxing when all she found was Stiles, sitting up and resting his chin on a hand as he considered her. He looked just like the third part of the trio she’d been a part of with Scott, way back before everything else. He looked just like she remembered, but Allison was uncomfortably aware of the differences. The absurd length of his hair was the most obvious, but she could pick out the rest of them with frightening speed--the fact that he wasn’t long and spindly anymore, the scruff on his cheeks (still looked as ridiculous as it had when he’d first grown some in college), the complete lack of baby fat from his cheeks, the crease between his eyebrows, the hardness in his eyes.

Lydia snuffles, interrupting Allison’s observations by turning over, subconsciously pulling Allison’s leather jacket that she’d stolen closer for more warmth now that Allison was up and away from her. 

“Have you visited him yet?” She asks, wanting more than anything to tear her eyes away from him when she spots the uptick of his jaw, the pain that flashes in the hazel of his eyes.

“No,” Stiles says, bland voice nearly perfect. She thinks if she didn’t know him so well she’d have fallen for it. He doesn’t expand though, and Allison decides not to push it. 

“When are the rest of them getting in?” She asks instead, gesturing at the list. Stiles had been back in town a couple of hours fewer than she, herself having arrived yesterday morning, but he also hadn’t been on some sort of soul-searching sabbatical. He still possessed the uncanny quality that suggested he knew the going-ons of everyone in the pack, distance and penchant for dodging phone calls and all.

“Scott and Liam should be landing in about an hour, actually,” Stiles says, glancing at his phone, spindly fingers wrapped around it. “Kira and Malia will be here before dinner. Mason still lives here, obviously, and Parrish too.” He pauses, shrugging. “Isaac’s probably in his room.” 

“You can shower first,” Stiles offers at last, the silence eating away at the pair of them in a way that can only happen when there’s very little in common between two people any longer. Of course, they have the pack, but that’s old news and even a little fuzzy. “I’ll see if Derek’s got anything decent to eat.”

Allison feels awkward wandering around Derek’s flat, riffling through the linen closet in his bedroom for the fluffiest towel and deciding to use his own bathroom, dragging her fingertips across the cool pond-stone surface of the massive shower, eyeing the jacuzzi tub with curiosity and a wrinkled nose. Putting the absurd mental image of Derek in a bubble bath out of mind, Allison steps toward the shower and fumbles with the handles, getting it on and at desired temperature before peeling off her clothes, stiff from plane and sweat and blood and mud and _god_ she can’t believe she’d even been able to fall asleep so grimy. 

Dragging Derek’s fancy soap though her hair, Lydia flashes through her brain unbidden, teasing and fond and warm in a way that real-life Lydia never allowed herself to be. Allison’s surprised at the force of longing that slams into her--she’d been under the impression that all the absence had dulled out any feelings she may or may not have once had. She supposes being back in Beacon Hills also meant being back in the mindset of a teenager, because she’s pretty sure she’d been about to stamp her foot before she settled for flipping her hair.

It takes her forty minutes and her fingers and toes look like prunes, but eventually, Allison’s ready to step out of the luxurious rain-shower, smirking a little bit at herself in the foggy mirror when Stiles pounds on the door for a third time.

“Go get me my suitcase,” she tells him after he informs her that Lydia’s awake and eating, taking an immature pleasure when he has to step back to avoid the billowing cloud of steam that pours out of the bathroom through the tiny crack she’d opened. Stiles rolls his eyes and scoffs, but complies, and Allison knows he’s regretting not paying more attention when Deaton mentioned that sparks could do summoning spells. She doesn’t actually know why he _didn’t_ pay attention to that, because it sounded exactly like the sort of thing that would come in handy with their lives, but Stiles had always been stubborn. He’d probably been irritated with the admittedly frustrating vet and tuned out purely in spite.

-

After grilled cheeses and picking up coffees from the corner cafe, the three of them make a quick stop at the large house in the forest, Stiles relenting to walk instead using of his Jeep. He doesn’t admit that that thing is probably only surviving on fumes and sheer miracles by now, but neither Allison or Lydia tease him about it. They know it had been his mother’s.

Allison’s pretty pleased to find that all of the runes had been burned into the wood, small and unnoticeable unless one was actively looking, but shimmering when she got near enough, recognizing her as their lifeforce. 

“You should have seen it, Stiles,” Lydia is telling him, watching with vague amusement as Allison considers whether or not to pick the lock and go inside. She ultimately decides not to, knowing that Derek was pretty damned pleased about this place and unwilling to take the surprise away. Stiles tries not to let his disappointment show--he was a thousand times more curious than she, but much more unwilling to break in if there wasn’t anyone he could blame it on. “It was amazing.”

“I _did_ see it,” Stiles shares and Allison balks. “I’d been turning off the freeway and the sky in our little corner of the world was light up like the northern lights.”

“It’s been a while,” she says modestly, unable to keep the pleased smile from curling the edges of her lips. “It was all bursting to get out anyway.”

They walk back to Derek’s apartment complex, spotting the camaro back in the lot which means Derek’s returned from the airport with Scott and Liam. When she, Lydia, and Stiles wander in, none of the werewolves look up, far used to pretending in human company, but Allison swears she sees the miniscule tightening in Scott’s shoulders. From her presence, or Stiles’, she wonders absently, but Liam’s leaping out of his seat, pretty blue eyes shining with the excitement of a pup scenting three of his pack for the first time in a while. Derek turns green eyes on Scott, fixing him with a sort of _this is the best you could do?_ but Allison knows Derek’s just doing it for show, watches him settle back in a pleased sort of way when Liam hugs her, Lydia, and Stiles, backs of his palms dragging across the sides of their necks. Pack scent mingling again, she thinks, would definitely please Derek’s alpha senses. It was probably why he hadn’t bothered to complain about her making a mess of his couch--why he’d not said anything about any of them of them using his soap.

Scott gets up slowly, smiling widely despite whatever hang-ups he may or may not have with one or both of the token humans of the pack. He rubs his cheeks against Allison’s, hugging her tight, and she clings to him for just a minute, proud and fond and finding a lot of comfort in his steadying presence. He hugs Lydia too, strong arms wrapped around her tiny frame as he kisses her forehead like they’re siblings. He licks Stiles clean up the face, from chin to temple, and, with Stiles' indignant yelp, the odd tension is broken for the moment, the lot of them joining Derek back at the wobbly kitchen table.

“How was Montana?” Allison asks after the allotted few seconds of them all taking each other in, cataloguing changes, scoffing (again) at Stiles’ ridiculous hair. Mason shows up halfway through catching-up, so Liam retells his story about the horse farm and the girl and the escaped chickens again, and Derek gets up quietly during the middle of it all to order an endless supply of pizza, which arrives just a few minutes before Malia and Kira do, and Malia gleefully eats an entire pineapple-and-mushroom all on her own, remembering to scent-mark them all in the midst of it and dragging greasy hands down arms and across jaws like a child, Kira rolling her eyes as she passes everyone wads of paper towels. Isaac clamors in an hour later, looking haunted as he recounts what sounds like a truly horrific travel-bus tale on how he’d gotten from Virginia to California in a few days, hands wrapped around a jumbo-sized coffee from the corner cafe that he’d apparently gone to get sometime.

“I didn’t want to say anything,” he tells them, explaining why his name hadn’t been on the for-sure RSVP list in their stupid Facebook group, “Just in case I ended up not being able to come.” Stiles tells him to quit his job and Isaac shrugs and admits he did, which has Derek choking, surprised because these days, apparently, it was hard to get Isaac to quit anything. Stiles sorts through his clay pots of colored pastes and Derek leaves to pick up Chinese since the pizza had been demolished, warily telling them all not to _burn the place down while he was gone_ and that he would _be right back_ , no indoor slip-and-slide, please and thank you.

“ _One_ time,” Stiles protests even after Derek’s gone, door shut firmly behind him. Isaac snickers at him and Scott silently holds up three fingers when Allison glances at him and suddenly she’s snickering too.

When Derek returns with enough Chinese take-out to feed a small country, the wolves eat ravenously, as though they hadn’t just finished off six large pizzas, Lydia poking at her sweet and sour chicken with interest, Stiles pouring chow mein directly into his mouth from the carton, using a chopstick as a guide.

The coffee table gets pushed to the corner of the living room and the couch gets stripped of it’s cushions and turned onto it’s side, sheets and duvets being brought out from everywhere as Isaac and Scott drag the former’s mattress out from his bedroom, Malia and Liam scrambling to Derek’s master bedroom on the second floor to gather all of the pillows and the California-king-sized comforter, throwing them over the landing. Lydia picks the movie and Derek tries (fails) to insist that no one eat anything in the rapidly-forming pack nest, but Stiles scoffs and digs out bags of Cheetos and packages of cookies from Derek’s alleged secret stash (alleged, because even Allison knew where it was). 

When they all settle in, Derek in the center back, sitting up and leaning against the wall, Stiles on his immediate left, Liam huddled on his right, between the alpha and Scott. The rest of them fan out, but everyone is in contact with at least two other people as Kira presses play on the DVD player (remote had been destroyed beyond fixing in some pack meeting from the beginning of college-days). Allison’s got her head in Lydia’s lap, the smaller girl dragging perfectly-manicured nails through her dark hair, grazing her scalp in a way that sends constant tingles down her spine.

Movie after movie is played, and Allison mostly ignores them, using the first one to consider which blessing she’s going to put on each pack member the next day, using the second to pretend, just for a moment, that Lydia’s stroking her hair out of something more than sisterly affection. Allison falls asleep halfway through the third movie, familiar green eyes and colored runes flickering in and out of her dreams.

-

It’s hard to pull herself away from the puppy pile when dawn breaks, but Allison’s magic has a way of knowing when she’s about to use it, and she’d been unable to force herself to sleep a moment longer. Preparations have to be made for the blessings that will take place at dusk, including creating the salve she’d be using. Using blood-magic for this was even riskier than using it to ward a house, but Allison couldn’t help it--it was the most guaranteed way to keep the magic as strong as possible, keep everyone as safe as she could.

Stiles was the second one up, as usual, if she recalled correctly, and from his expression she could tell he totally didn’t buy the unconvincing story that her cut had somehow opened in the night and required a new bandage. He tapped his fingers in a seemingly arbitrary pattern against her wrist, keeping eye contact for the intense-factor more than actually requiring it. Allison could feel the cool tingle of magic washing over the heel of her palm and she knew that his sporadic tapping was more premeditated than he made it seem. He’d healed her cut, tapping the index finger of his other hand to his lips in a silent show that he wouldn’t tell on her if she didn’t tell on him.

Stiles wasn’t supposed to be using magic anymore, but, then, she wasn’t supposed to be linking her pack to her lifeforce, so Allison supposed she couldn’t really lecture him. He helped her grind out the dried chamomile buds--for patience and long life--in her stone mortar and pestle while she scooped out aloe--for protection and healing. White sage for wisdom went in next, followed by violet, which was more personal, for devotion.

At last second, she ground up a number of zinnia petals, giving the whole mixture a warmer reddish tint than it would have been with just the violet. Stiles side-eyed her, and she was suddenly very glad that the rest of the pack was still asleep, or, at least, sleepily snuffling against one another in an unwillingness to leave the warmth and security of the puppy pile.

Zinnia, for missing friends.

Scooping the whole mixture into a clean clay pot, Allison allowed Stiles to help her clean up the countertop, watching curiously as he moved with ease in the kitchen as though he’d been there a hundred thousand times. He’d been the only other pack member besides Derek to permanently reside in Beacon Hills, so she supposed he probably _been_ in the kitchen as many times as she’d guessed, but it felt like something else.

She kept quiet, mind whirling faster and faster. The last time she’d done a blessing ritual had been before the pack had gone their separate ways for college and life, because when she’d set out with the rest of them, she hadn’t returned with the rest of them. As a human, the preternatural feeling of pack was nearly nonexistent--the desire to go home to her alpha and scent-mark everyone else and be scent-marked by everyone else wasn’t a primal instinct, but it _was_ something that had already been ingrained into her by then, especially considering her pack’s unusually close bond. Each year, when the notification popped up in her email, a letter from Facebook of all things, telling her that Stiles Stilinski had created and invited her to an event, she’d fought hard to keep away.

The last time she’d done a blessing ritual, she’d known exactly what runes to thumb onto foreheads and chests. This time, she figured, was going to be a little bit more impulsive.

Maybe that was better.

-

The pack set out for the house in the forest after a late lunch which took place at Stiles’ favorite diner--with the curly fries and the best-in-the-world milkshakes. They’d spent the entire morning lounging around, reacclimating themselves with each other’s senses, sharing a few extra stories that hadn’t been initially shared during the catch-up dinner, which somehow turned into everyone trying their hardest to best everyone else’s most embarrassing story about a fellow pack member.

Lunch had been familiar in the way everything else was, Parrish catching up with them and lingering, chatting with Stiles and Derek about a case, fist-bumping Scott, ruffling Liam’s hair, hugging Allison and Lydia with welcome-home’s whispered into their ears. The food was straight out of Allison’s collection of adolescent memories, burgers juicy and perfectly charred, curly fries better than she recalled, likely because they weren’t exactly common in France.

The pack traveled in pairs or groups of three, some of the wolves deciding to go for a quick sprint through the trees in their shifted form all of them ending up fairly quickly outside of the house. They all stood together, out front, no one really getting particularly close to the structure as they looked up at it in silence. The thing was huge, really; three floors with a balcony at the top and a wrap around porch and actual pillars in front of the entryway. It was an egg-shell white, deep blue shutters at all the windows, a brilliant brick chimney to one side, the other covered in ivy that had sprung up wildly fast in the face of Allison and Lydia’s wards.

The thing wasn’t directly on the foundations of the old Hale house, which has since been cleared away, tunnels filled in, sod laid out over the whole area so no one would be able to detect exactly where the original had once stood. Allison knew Derek probably knew to the inch, but he was proud of this new creation--he’d done most of the work himself, likely using his hulking, looming intimidation skills to get permits passed and signed unnaturally fast.

Allison knew from pictures that this new house was similar but not identical to the Hale house, knew that there were more windows for escape purposes and that Stiles had cheated on his no-magic ban to spell some mountain ash in such a way that it would counteract the effects of anyone else’s magical boundary, should something like the Hale fire ever happen again.

“Everyone’s space has their name on their door,” Derek says at last, voice strong and warm in a way that had taken years to cultivate. It was no secret that the strict way he’d handled them when they were a bunch of rowdy teenagers had been similar to how most pack alphas ran things, but once Derek got his shit together, he’d decided he wanted to run things as more of a family unit. “No fighting.”

“Sure, comrade,” Stiles mutters loud enough for Allison to hear, and Scott snickers. He’s the first one to step closer to the house, glancing back with a playfully challenging expression when he notices no one is following him. “Last one there is on dishes duty for a month.”

Derek is the last one there, it turns out, because he’d stayed out front, watching as the pack sprung into action, rushing up the stairs and across the wide porch, stomping and clamoring over each other in their efforts to be the first ones up the staircase, the first ones to find their rooms.

“Heathens,” Lydia observes, eyes crinkling in the corners, as she and Stiles and Allison follow behind at a more sedate pace. Allison figures if she’d wanted to be first, she’d have been first, but Lydia is always in the business of pretending she’s much more mature than the rest of their unruly misfit pack, even though everyone knows that she’s just as petty and competitive as the rest of them.

Allison’s room is on the second floor, at the front, overlooking the expanse of the grassy front yard, lined, as is the rest of the property, by the forest line. She supposes every room will have a good view, throwing open her window before and breathing in deeply before she whirls around to examine everything. The walls are a dark forest green, the floor the same light oak as most of the rest of the house. She’s got a window seat and a small closet that has a secret door in the back to what looks like a small weapon armor, already stocked with a crossbow and two longbows and endless arrows. On the opposite side of the secret weapon room is a cabinet with a slate countertop, and Allison knows the dozens of tiny drawers are for herbs and salves.

The bed is huge and imposing, a queen on a sturdy wooden canopy, white gauzy fabric draping down from the cross-bars at the top, and there’s a fluffy beige rug on the floor for colder months. Her drawers and closet-closet are empty but there, waiting for the day when she’s ready to return home and stay home. She thinks that day might be soon.

After allowing herself a moment of childish pleasure in bouncing on the mattress, she steps out into the hallway, listening to the sounds of the rest of them exploring and shouting with glee and amazement. She’d already known that Derek had put a lot of thought into the whole project, but, as she passed Kira’s painting studio, since she and Malia were sharing a bedroom, and Isaac’s room, done in peaceful blues and with a plush white carpet instead of hardwood, Allison is struck with how well Derek knows his pack.

She sort of wants to visit the third floor (sort of wants to see what Lydia’s room looks like, perhaps to continue fueling her ridiculous fantasies), but figures that there will be time for that later. Finding Derek’s bedroom--the only one on the first floor--isn’t hard, and he’s standing at his sturdy wooden dresser, looking thoughtfully at some trinket someone had given him that he rested atop. His window sills are lined in boxed plants and the snowglobes she’d sent to him every time she went somewhere new, there’s a massive painting by Kira on one wall and some Marvel poster from Stiles on the other. The more she looks, the more objects from the pack she sees--the sweater Liam had bought him for his thirtieth birthday hanging over an armchair, the stack of CDs of what Lydia had dubbed “the only important music” sitting on a floor, half of them already in a CD storage shelving unit, the others having not yet made it. Scott’s lacrosse jersey from high school, framed and autographed, because he was still a dork, is leaning against the third wall.

Allison can’t help herself--strides from the doorway straight to her alpha, catching him with his guard down and startling him when she throws her arms around him and hugs him tight in the way she hadn’t when they’d all caught up the day previous. It doesn’t even take a second before he’s hugging her back and some part of her that’s been rewired beyond normal human recognition relaxes for the first time since she’d left when she feels the palms of his hand skating across her shoulder blades, his nose drawing lines from her temple to her forehead, the last one in the pack to scent mark her since she’d gotten back.

She wants to thank him--wants to tell him she’s so proud of him, but doesn’t know quite how to get the words out without sounding superficial and stupid, so she doesn’t. She knows he understands anyway.

The pack spend the last few hours before dusk rolls around exploring each other’s rooms and investigating the huge living room that’s opposite Derek’s bedroom. The kitchen is impressive as well, but everyone’s preoccupied making sure there’s enough room for puppy piles and criticizing Derek’s taste in movies.

“There wasn’t a point in buying movies you already have,” Derek protests when Stiles complains the lack of anything super-hero-related. “You’re just going to bring them over here anyway.” He looks amused when Stiles huffs, crossing his arms, and Allison’s eyebrow twitches up as she catches the younger man’s eye, reveling in his flushed cheeks.

Eventually though, dusk rolls around, the clear sky pinkening as the sun sets behind the line of the trees. The pack gathers in the back yard, shirts off or open despite the winter chill in the air, breath coming out in little puffs as they form a loose circle, fingers touching one another, hands clasped to each other, everyone linked together as Allison pops off the cap to her clay pot filled with salve and starts in front of Derek. She draws the rune for wisdom in the ruddy paste on his forehead, touches her thumb to each of his temple, before drawing three runes in quick succession across his chest: humility, strength, and salvation over his heart, murmuring in an odd mixture of latin and English, watching as the salve shimmers.

She makes the rounds, giving a little extra protection to Liam, the baby of the pack, drawing a fourth rune on Isaac’s chest for stability and comfort, noticeably neglecting to allow Stiles anywhere near a wisdom rune (man’s too smart for his own good) but etching out her most powerful purity rune over his heart. Scott gets power too, and gratitude, and Kira gets something for warm wishes and Malia gets one for her free, reckless soul and another for welcoming that has her smiling a little misty-eyed at Allison as the darker-haired girl mumbles another line of the spell.

Lydia gets stability and love, success and strength in journey. Looking into the green depths of her best friend’s eyes, Allison trades in the generic protection symbol for something a little more obvious. She painstakingly etches out the complex swirls of devotion, forcing herself to keep meeting Lydia’s steady gaze as she finishes off the last line of the spell. Everyone gasps, feeling the blessing and the magic settle over them, light as air but cool as water, feeling like a sheet before the sense fades away, along with the salve. Lydia’s runes, though, glow, much like how Allison knows the wards on the house had two nights before, some strange, invisible thread of connection arching between the devotion symbol placed right over her heart and Allison.

It’s gone quicker than Allison can blink, but suddenly she feels exhausted and worn thin. She doesn’t miss the strange look that passes through Lydia’s eyes, even if the girl’s face stays perfectly neutral. Allison can’t even begin to decipher it.

“C’mon, Ally,” Stiles says a minute later, stepping forward and gripping her arms in a brotherly sort of move, protective and a little worried by her suddenly slumped position. “Let’s get some juice in you, yeah?”

The pack agrees, Derek herding them into the house after her and Stiles, arms and hips bumping into each other, a powerful feeling of contentment and connection settling over them as the final residue of Allison’s magic drifts away. Lydia follows them into the kitchen, choosing an expensive red wine over the glass of orange juice Stiles pours Allison, bickering with Stiles about some algorithm as Allison sips at her juice slowly and wonders what the hell is wrong with herself.

A devotion rune during a blood-infused blessing ritual was stupid and reckless on her part, but even as the rational part of her brain continues to tell her that, she can’t exactly make herself regret it. There’s no way Lydia doesn’t know now, and as terrifying as that thought is, it’s also exhilarating and freeing. The ball is in Lydia’s court for once (always, but now without choice), and Allison is as curious as she is embarrassed and worried about what’s going to happen next.

She leaves Lydia to her wine and her argument with Stiles just as the red-head pours herself another glass, gesticulating wildly as she gets very into telling Stiles just how tiny his narrow-minded brain is while Allison crosses the hall, examining pictures of the pack on the walls briefly, into the living room. A pack nest has not yet been set up, everyone lounging casually on the sectional and the loveseats, Derek in his ridiculous arm chair that he’d bought way back before the old Hale house had even been torn down (bought as some sort of inspiration to take on the project, but ridiculous nonetheless). They grin at her with varying degrees of sheer happiness, the television on low but no one really paying attention as everyone talks quietly amongst themselves.

She meets Scotts eye and suddenly wishes that she’d just stayed in the kitchen with Stiles and Lydia, but finds herself mostly unable to resist following him when he gets up and pointedly leaves the room.

“I saw what you did,” he says accusingly the second she closes the door to his bedroom. He’s sitting at his own window seat, and even though is voice is pinning her suspect to the obvious, he’s looking down at the back yard with a thoughtful expression on his face. “You used that on me, once, right?”

She had. She feels like she doesn’t need to verbalize that thought--feels like Scott either already knows for sure or can glean the answer from her face, and he does, once he glances back at her. He scoots and she takes the social cue, sitting down on the other side of the long window seat, pulling her knees up to her chest and wrapping long arms around them, resting her chin down low as she studies him studying the yard.

“I honestly didn’t think Derek would ever finish this place,” he says offhandedly, smiling and shaking his head ruefully. “Whenever I would visit, it always seemed so far off from the finish line that it would take lifetimes to finally make it to the end result.”

“He called me for the first time when he finished,” Allison offers, smiling herself at the memory. Derek had been amazing when she’d left, resisting the urge to pressure her into coming home, or even for her whereabouts. He waited for her to call--twice a month, every month, for just over five years--instead of calling himself, and it was probably the biggest reason why she’d decided against binning her cell phone to further avoid detection from Lydia and Stiles.

“It’s going to be okay,” Scott says abruptly, turning from the window to gaze at her, warm, familiar brown eyes soothing her in a way that touches her down to her toes. “I swear, Allison,” he says, reaching out and touching his palm to her forearm, black veins racing across his skin as he unapologetically draws out as much of her stress and anxiety before she can shake off his gentle grip. “Everything is going to be fine. Everything is going to be good.”

She feels the corner of her mouth upticking in the face of his firm belief--feels herself share his beliefs the way he’d always been able to make her see his side of things. Their relationship had evolved quite the bit since they’d met when they were sixteen, but Scott would never lose the ability to scare her fear away.

“I love you,” she tells him, inching forward so she can hug him, unsurprised at how easy it had been to settle back into the constant-touching state that the pack was always in. It wasn’t like she’d hugged everyone she met in her travels--wasn’t like she’d hugged almost anyone at all, actually, unwilling to stomach the idea of being smothered in scents that weren’t her pack, knowing all the while that normal humans didn’t think that way. She’d decided somewhere between Germany and Siberia that she didn’t want to be a normal human if it meant that the supernatural couldn’t exist in her world.

“I love you too,” he replies, the way he always has, and he hugs her back, drawing out more of her anxiety, getting away with it because he’s Scott.

-

The pack watches two seasons of the Voice, arguing like the world is ending over who should win, even though Allison’s pretty sure at least half of them already know the outcome. Isaac breaks out the wolfsbane-laced alcohol so that Lydia isn’t the only one drinking (“how chivalrous of you, Lahey.”), and the bickering increases when normal defenses are so far down. Stiles somehow blurts out that he and Derek are dating and absolutely no one is surprised, which causes him to blush and grin, accepting toasts and knocking back his double-shot of vodka-cran, his eyes glazed and bright.

Eventually, Derek tells them all to get to bed so they can sleep off their alcohol, and Allison, who’d nursed a single glass of wine the entire night is perhaps the only one who listens immediately. The magic had taken a lot out of her--it was a lot of people she’d suddenly attached to her lifeforce, after a lot of years for the old spell to fade and dwindle. The alcohol dampens the after effects of the magic racing through her veins, though, which is probably why Stiles hadn’t said anything when she’d accepted the glass, despite the twitch of his eyebrow that told her they’d be having _words_ over safe magical practices--the ruddy hypocrite. 

Allison’s in her flannel pajamas, searching through her duffel for the book she’d been unable to read on the plane-ride in, trying to decide if she would have more success reading it now that she was buzzed and relaxed.

Lydia’s entrance startles her in a way that suggests Derek isn’t the only one with his constant vigilance dialed down low, and Allison looks up, crouched on the ground in front of her bed, at the red-haired beauty standing in the doorway. Lydia does a good job of pretending she’s not drunk, but her heels trip her up (as they always do) when she enters the room, closes the door behind her, and crosses over to Allison. The long spike of her left foot gets caught in the fuzzy rug and Allison’s not tipsy enough to be unable to spring out of her crouch to catch Lydia before the girl cracks her skull open on the sharp edge of the empty dresser.

“There you go again,” Lydia mumbles, blinking hazy green eyes up at Allison and making absolutely no move to get out of the taller girl’s arms. Her makeup had been scant today, and up close, Allison could easily count the freckles that Lydia worked hard to cover up (the ones that Allison loved), could easily see that the flush from the alcohol and something else spread prettily across Lydia’s cheeks and down her neck, disappearing into the neckline of Lydia’s stretchy-cotton blue dress. “My hero,” Lydia declares, eyes softening, lips pulling into a fond, silly grin.

“Always, Lyd,” Allison says softly, promise ringing through the quiet of the room and Lydia’s blush deepens, pleased.

“I’m in love with you, you know,” Lydia says matter-of-factly, and Allison feels like the world has stopped and also like Lydia’s lucky she didn’t just get dropped. Helping her over to the bed, Allison pulls the plush duvet back and manhandles Lydia onto the mattress, stooping over so she can pull Lydia’s red heels off one at a time, fingers unable to stop roving around Lydia’s calves, thumbs pushing hard into the arches of Lydia’s presumably sore feet, the supine girl groaning with pleasure as Allison’s fingers work small, perfectly-cared for feet, hands edging up to massage calves but going no farther.

“I have loved you since we were eighteen,” Allison replies after a long time, and Lydia’s sleepy eyes watch her.

“I wasn’t ready,” Lydia admits quietly, “Not then.”

“I know,” Allison says, and she’s not condemning, merely agreeing. “But I didn’t know how to wait patiently while I spent every waking minute with you.”

“I’m ready now,” Lydia whispers, and Allison feels like every second of her life has led up right to this moment here. She can’t help herself--is entirely unable to resist bending her neck and pressing her lips against the delicate bones of the tops of Lydia’s feet, knowing it’s symbolic of the damned rune she’d given her best friend in the whole world, symbolic of her promise just a few minutes previously.

Allison finishes with Lydia’s feet, rising to her own with a sort of grace she hadn’t expected to possess after the night’s events. She moves closer to Lydia’s head, leaning down and brushing red hair away from her face, eyes trekking across Lydia’s features, memorizing them, allowing them to burn into her mind the way she always has. The difference, though, is that Lydia is doing the same thing, her eyes filled with the sort of adoration she never allowed to show on her face, and Allison feels her magic welling up inside of her, despite the wine, surging wildly and cheerfully at the extreme emotions she’s feeling right then.

She bends further down and presses her lips against Lydia’s--bare and unglossed for once in the girl’s life, shiny only because of the tongue dragged across when she’d realized Allison’s intentions. Allison kisses Lydia and Lydia kisses back, delicate hand with the perfectly-manicured fingers reaching up to cup Allison’s jaw, and Allison knows without a doubt that they’re in it for the long-haul.

Allison recalls her packed boxes in her tiny apartment in France. She’d had a feeling. “Good night, Lyd,” Allison says finally, pulling back because it’s late and despite her magic flowing like the sea through her veins, she’s still exhausted and Lydia’s still drunk. But it’s okay, because there’ll always be a tomorrow, now.

**Author's Note:**

> wow  
> come talk to me or prompt me on tumblr [@rosalinesbenvolio](http://www.rosalinesbenvolio.tumblr.com)!!


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